Industry increasingly depends upon highly automated data acquisition and control systems to ensure that industrial processes are run efficiently, safely and reliably while lowering their overall production costs. Data acquisition begins when a number of sensors measure aspects of an industrial process and periodically report their measurements back to a data collection and control system. Such measurements come in a wide variety of forms and are used by industrial process control systems to regulate a variety of operations, both with respect to continuous and discrete manufacturing processes. By way of example the measurements produced by a sensor/recorder include: a temperature, a pressure, a pH, a mass/volume flow of material, a quantity of bottles filled in an hour, a tallied inventory of packages waiting in a shipping line, or a photograph of a room in a factory. Often sophisticated process management and control software examines the incoming data, produces status reports, and, in many cases, responds by sending commands to actuators/controllers that adjust the operation of at least a portion of the industrial process. The data produced by the sensors also allow an operator to perform a number of supervisory tasks including: tailor the process (e.g., specify new set points) in response to varying external conditions (including costs of raw materials), detect an inefficient/non-optimal operating condition and/or impending equipment failure, and take remedial actions such as adjust a valve position, or even move equipment into and out of service as required.
Typical industrial processes today are extremely complex and comprise many intelligent transmitters and/or positioners. By way of example, it is not unheard of to have thousands of sensors and control elements (e.g., valve actuators) monitoring/controlling aspects of a multi-stage process within an industrial plant. These sensors and control elements are subject to wearing out and/or failing over time. In such instances, a replacement field device, often of same model and version, is installed in place of the failing/worn field device. As field devices have become more advanced over time, the process of setting up field devices for use in particular installations has also increased in complexity.
In previous generations of industrial process control equipment, and more particularly field devices, transmitters and positioners were comparatively simple components. Before the introduction of digital (intelligent) transmitters, setup activities associated with replacing a worn out/failing field device with a new one were relatively simple. Industry standards like 3-15 psi for pneumatic instruments or 4-20 ma for electronic instruments allowed a degree of interoperability that minimized setup and configuration of analog transmitters.
More contemporary field devices that include digital data transmitting capabilities and on-device digital processors, referred to generally as “intelligent” field devices, require significantly more configuration effort when setting up a new field device to replace a previously existing field device—to match the application within which the existing device is used. During configuration a set of parameters are set, within the new/replacement device, at either a device level (HART, PROFIBUS, FoxCOM, DeviceNet) or a block level within the device (FOUNDATION™ fieldbus).
Replacing complex, intelligent devices requires the person performing the replacement activity to possess considerable knowledge of the specific device that is being replaced. Furthermore, during replacement a previously (bench) calibrated replacement field device is potentially disabled. The disabled replacement field device must be re-calibrated—which may require highly-specialized equipment and well trained technicians. In view of the significant consequences associated with disabling a field device during installation, users are generally informed regarding the following: parameters that must not be changed during device configuration; and parameters that configuration tools (software) adjust in response to particular configuration actions taken by the user.
In addition to the significant risks to configuration settings mentioned herein above arising from parameter editing by users, users must have knowledge of which operational modes allow configuration activities to be performed on certain types of devices. There are no general or obvious rules that are intuitive to learn and remember. In view of the complexities associated with configuring the large number of parameters associated with field devices, applications have been provided that present a subset of configurable parameters. However, the user is still required to enter/confirm values for the new/replacement field device. Such applications do not preclude potential configuration errors associated with specifying values for the configurable parameters. As a consequence, the mere replacement of an existing field device with a field device having a same set of configurable parameters (e.g., a device of the same model and version/revision) is still an operation requiring a relatively high degree of skill and knowledge by the person performing the replacement. Such device-specific knowledge includes, but is not limited to, identifying a set of parameters that must be configured as well as parameters (e.g., calibration values) that must not be modified during configuration/installation. In addition, the installer must potentially know specific methods/operations that need to be executed before a replacement device is fully operational in a particular application environment.